Sir Bradley Wiggins calls it his “race of truth” and declares that if he
becomes world time-trial champion in Florence on Wednesday it would mean
more to him than any victory in his garlanded career, even ahead of his
historic Tour de France triumph last year.

Rainbow warrior: Sir Bradley Wiggins says he is back to his very bestPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

This is a man who has won four Olympic gold medals, six world championships on the track and, of course, that Tour first last year, yet a world title on the road has always deserted him.

So, after a year when he heard the sceptics suggest that we had seen the last of him on a bike, he says he is prepared to endure the numbing pain of just him and his bike versus the clock for 36 merciless miles through the Tuscan countryside and into Florence’s beautiful streets to correct that omission in his glorious c.v.

“If I could do it, this will probably mean the most of any medals or races l’ve ever won,” Wiggins said, as he relaxed in the British team hotel in Pistoia, 25 miles from Florence. “I think a lot of people wrote me off in May and there was a lot of ‘is his career over?’ or ‘will we ever see him on a bike again?’ so this, as an individual event, will mean a lot.

“Yes, even more than the Tour. The Tour win was different. I’d come from a different road to that. This is coming back from other places.”

Darker places, in truth, after a year when he had to pull out of the Giro d’Italia with illness and could not defend his Tour title because of injury. After the Giro failure, what price redemption on Italian roads? At 33, Wiggins accepts, he might just be his last chance but swears he is in the best shape ever for the challenge.

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He needs to be since his perennial rivals, reigning champion Tony Martin and Fabian Cancellara both fancy their chances strongly. Germany’s Martin, shooting for a straight hat-trick of titles, neatly lit the fuse by suggesting Wiggins may have made a fatal mistake by arriving too late here on Monday evening to prepare.

For while Wiggins was completing his Tour of Britain triumph at the weekend, Martin believes he had the distinct advantage of riding the course at full throttle when the roads in ­Florence were closed for training and he was able to ride Sunday’s team time trial, too.

“Having not ridden the course at race speed, especially through the older parts of Florence, is a disadvantage,” Martin said. “I know where the critical points are now, which could count for precious seconds.”

To which Wiggins’s rather ­withering response was: “I won’t tell you my thoughts about that. I know what I need to do. I’ve never done propaganda. This is the race of truth for everybody. At 57.9km and about an hour and five minutes, it’s a good 15 minutes longer than most world or Olympics time trials so there’s not many people in the world who can sustain those sort of powers for that length of time. I’ve done nothing but specific work towards it for three months.”

There is something about time trialling that appeals to the more cussed, solitary, introspective side of Wiggins’s nature. How would it feel, that run from the spa town of Montecatini Terme over the pancake flat parcours? “Like having a tattoo done,” Wiggins said with a smile.

“It hurts for 10 minutes but after a while, you don’t even feel it any more, you get into a different state really – you’re looking at me like I’m mad! – but you become almost numb to the pain because you’re so focused. Then you cross the line and realise how much pain you’re in.

“But this is the best I’ve ever been for the time trial. I love them because you can’t control what the others are going to do and vice versa. It’s just you against your bike. I’ve always loved that.”

Last week, when preparing at Knowlsey Park with a Tour of Britain-winning performance over a course a quarter of the distance, Wiggins swore he was prepared to end up in hospital, risking everything over the wet roads, rather than finish second. Nothing has changed here.

The Knowsley race left Alex Dowsett, his British team-mate, awestruck, saying: “It was something very incredible. I’d say he’s favourite here, he can stay in a world of hurt for such a sustained period.”

First, Wiggins must be the warrior who overcomes both ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Der Panzerwagen’, aka Cancellara and Martin, whose big engines have dominated time trialling in recent years by, between them, annexing six of the last seven world titles.

Then there is Taylor Phinney, the 23-year-old American expected to be the next master of the event. Based locally, he knows these Tuscan roads intimately.

Both Cancellara and Martin appear up for the fight, having been in ­ominously good form at the recent Vuelta a España.

Martin produced one truly monumental effort as a lone breakaway man on stage six, holding off the entire pursuing bunch for nearly four hours before finally succumbing, then ­Cancellara outpaced him in the stage 11 time trial by 37 seconds to ­demonstrate that, as Wiggins ­suspects, “it looks like he’s got his act together again and it’s got to the point where it’s a level playing field and it could be any one of the three of us ­winning”.

Dowsett, though, believes, like many, that it would be wholly fitting to see Wiggins don a rainbow jersey, the world champion’s prize, for the first time since his track triumphs in Manchester five years ago. “It’s the one thing on his cv to tick off. Brad’s won everything except this and it would be awesome to see the rainbow stripes on the shoulders of a British rider again.”

No Briton has triumphed since Chris Boardman in the inaugural edition of the time trial in 1994; now it looks like the knight rider’s hour.